


The Lives of the Profoundly Weird

by CharleyFoxtrot



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Assumed Asexuality, Demisexuality, F/M, Impotence, John is the one who has sex issues now, M/M, Sherlock is sort of normal, That moment where you stop and realize how weird your life really is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-11
Updated: 2012-04-11
Packaged: 2017-11-03 11:07:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharleyFoxtrot/pseuds/CharleyFoxtrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John isn't normal. He knows this: He can tell. Coming back to London only drove it home. He is, as they say, weird. Profoundly weird. That he can't have sex or deal with proper interpersonal relationships is only the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the iceberg may as well be named Sherlock Holmes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. death of a soldier boy

**Author's Note:**

> Right, so, this, as with most of my Sherlock stuff, is un-beta'd and un-brit-picked. Any mistakes or continuity errors are mine and mine alone. 
> 
> This fic has been abandoned. Sorry.

 

_I came out of the darkness with a bullet in my hand_

_I got one more shot at livin', and I'm lucky that I can_

_Cuz I got a little roughed up – yeah, I really got fucked up_

_I came out of the darkness with a bullet in my hand_

 

John Watson tossed and turned, his body laying tracks across the cot in his horrible, terrible little rented room. Many people believe that once you leave a war it's over and done with, but it's not true in John's case – he's brought the war home with him, beating it's tempo out across sweat-slicked sheets and waking up with a sudden scream.

He was there for so long – volunteering for so many tours over his years there that they all sort of bled together. He'd be lying to himself if he didn't admit that he'd expected to die in Afghanistan, his blood pouring out of him into that high desert sand like some sort of new-age art exhibit.

He'd call it Death of a Soldier Boy. It would be his masterpiece.

There had been one brief moment, when he'd been shot. His head had arched back and his eyes had closed and he'd thought, _this is it_. And then just as suddenly the urge to survive, to live through this, had slammed into him and he'd thought, _please, God, don't let me die. Not here, not like this._

He mentions it, among other things, to his therapist. That he never thought he'd see London again, that he feels out of sorts, out of place, trying to make a living on an Army pension in the poshest city in the world.

He can't even relieve the tension in his frame through the traditional method, and it irks him, but if his therapy has done one thing for him it's made him realize that he's very nearly always been uninterested in sex. He had teenage flings, of course, all the way up through medical school. His hormones had made themselves known in the most obvious ways, but he'd been little more than a child. It's been almost ten years since he joined the Army, and he hasn't had sex since well before that, even. His therapist throws terms around like situational asexuality and heteroromanticism. John doesn't care, he just knows that there's a wiry stress riding through his body and he cannot get rid of it because he can't even get an erection.

He's just going through the motions of life. It's not even a depressing thing, it just _is_ , and he wonders why he begged God to live on that desert floor, why he used up his one great wish on that. He could have maybe asked for a cure to his asexuality or to win the lottery. Living, it seems, just wasn't worth it.

“Keep a journal,” the therapist told him. 

“I can barely write,” John says, displaying his shaky hands. “It'd be illegible.”

“Then get a blog,” she responds, automatically. “There are loads of free sites out there – just go to Wordpress or Blogger or Tumblr. You can make it totally private if you want. But you need an outlet.”

“I don't see the point,” John says: reasonably, he thinks. “Nothing ever happens to me.”

 

There are days when he actually does consider putting the Browning into his mouth and ending it. It's not because he's depressed, he's just so unalterably _bored_ and he has no idea how an old soldier (God, he's coming up on 35, he shouldn't _feel_ this achingly old) could possibly fit into this modern world. He needs a war to fight and he has no idea where to find one. There has to have been someone before him who's had this problem, the problem of having survived when you never expected to. Of terminal boredom and ill-ease with the world around you. The problem is that John cannot figure out where to possibly go: all of the soldier's groups focus on reintegration. John doesn't want to be reintegrated.

John wants to fight.

John Hamish Watson is lost without the battlefield. 

 

He considers getting a job: the Army pension isn't enough to survive on in London, and he doesn't necessarily want to move because London is the closest thing Great Britain even _has_ to a warzone. He's a good doctor, he knows, and though the tremor in his hands will prevent him from being a surgeon he could get a decent job being a GP in-town, and he could stay in London that way. 

His curriculum vitae is hardly empty: he has patched boys up and sent them home to become successful lawyers and doctors and husbands and fathers. He once helped cure the most epic case of the shits Camp Leatherneck had ever seen (and the things those Americans had been eating _hadn't helped_ ). He can determine time of death in ten seconds flat, whether from a bullet or poisoned MRE's, and he knows exactly what dose of paracetamol will blur the edges of pain without compromising one's liver or alertness through narcotics.

John is a good doctor, but he knows that without needing a field kit, without needing to dig into someone's leg with a jackknife, he's going to be unshakably bored. The closest he could possibly get is being an emergency tech, and he doesn't have the certification for it.

He's just on his way to St. Bart's to ask about the certifications (and to see whether the Army might cover it) when he runs into an old friend, Mike Stamford. Just his luck, Mike is a teacher now, and John reminds himself to ask after the certification while he buys him this coffee.

They pass pleasantries awkwardly. John has never been the most outgoing of people, was never a party animal, but the war has changed him and he knows that Mike is silently comparing this John Watson against the one he knew back in medical school. He asks him if he's going to stay in London and briefly John is reminded of his therapist. He wonders if Mike is moonlighting as a psychiatrist these days.

“I can't afford to stay in London on an Army pension,” he says, abruptly. He takes a sip of coffee.

“You could get a flatmate,” Mike suggests. “Split your costs that way. The John I know wouldn't want to leave London.” John eyes him warily, wondering what he's ascertained in their brief contact so far.

“Who'd want me as a flatmate?” John says. He thinks this is reasonable – he doesn't sleep for days at a time sometimes because of the nightmares, and when he does he's prone to screaming fits. He stalks around his rented room with his Browning tucked into the waistband of his sleep pants and jumps at the slightest sound. He can't have sex and forming emotional attachments may be entirely out of the question. He's about as broken as they come and even worse, he _doesn't want to be fixed_.

No, he doesn't think he'd be a good flatmate. To his surprise, in the few seconds it took John to completely recount his laundry list of faults to himself, Mike has began chuckling.

“What?” John asks.

“It's just funny,” Mike says, still chuckling. “That's the second time I've heard that today.”

 

The moment that John Watson and Sherlock Holmes met each other does not begin with a bang, nor an explosion, but with a suppressed whimper slipping out of John's compressed lips. John considers himself fairly good at reading people: he's got a gut instinct for it. It's the kind of thing you learn to suss out quickly when you're getting shot at.

That inner boredom and disquiet, the lust for violence and destruction that he knows is within himself, is reflected within every beautiful line of this man's body. They couldn't look more different; night and day, really. And yet somehow that burning need for battle and gore and filth and disorganization: there it is. 

John clutches his cane harder and ignores the suddenly-desperate need to reach out and touch a kindred spirit. 

When he finds himself suddenly agreeing to look at a flat with this strange man he wonders if he's stepped outside of his own life and into someone else's. The encounter left him stunned, almost breathless, and he looks at Mike in consternation.

“Yeah,” Mike says. “He's always like that.”

 

The flat is perfect, and John sort of hates Sherlock for finding such a prime spot and offering him a place in it. It's a contrary sort of hate, the kind he always felt for his sister growing up, just because she was _there_ and _wasn't him_. He ignores it and plants his arse on a pillow with the Union Jack on it.

“There's another bedroom upstairs if you'll be needing it,” says Mrs. Hudson, kindly. John blinks for a second before the implications of that statement percolate through his consciousness.

“Of course we'll be needing a second bedroom,” he says. He frowns, wondering exactly how one could possibly explain asexuality, let alone impotence, to a woman like this. He glances at Sherlock, who smirks back. John wonders if Sherlock has already picked up on this facet of his potential flatmate.

They vaguely sort of discuss the terms of the flat. John isn't entirely certain he'll take Sherlock up on this offer, just out of general contrariness, but he's interested, especially when a detective inspector with silver hair and a haunted face begs Sherlock's help. There's a sort of unrestrained joy there when the DI leaves, and Sherlock is dancing about the kitchen like a schoolchild who's just been given a chocolate bar.

There's a dead body and John has never been more jealous in his life.

John is a soldier, and he knows this about himself. He desperately needs a battle to fight, he needs gore and blood, and most of all, someone to follow. Sherlock is standing in the doorway, lanky frame almost possessing the door like it's a lover. John wonders if he does that often.

“You're a doctor,” Sherlock says. Stating the obvious, really.

“Yes,” John says, struggling to his feet.

“An Army doctor,” Sherlock muses. He stares into John's face. For all John knows he's reading it like a book. “Any good?”

“Very good,” John says, not even giving a shit that it probably sounds like he's full of himself. He knows where his strengths lay.

The short of it is that Sherlock Holmes asks John Watson to come to a crime scene with him. As far as first dates go, it could be worse.


	2. you can't giggle at a crime scene

 

_If we don't make it alive –_

_Well, it's a hell of a good day to die!_

 

John spends a lot of the next few days getting to know his new flatmate, in between chasing after a serial killer. Sherlock is really something: intelligent, quick-witted, and with the same sort of macabre sense of humor that John himself has.

John doesn't know what to do, exactly, about the fact that people seem intent on pairing the two of them together. That first night, before Sherlock led him on a merry chase through London's back alleys, he made an abortive attempt to explain his apparent lack of sexuality. It was all very awkward and he was glad to put it out of his mind, especially glad when Sherlock had explained that he considered himself married to his work. That was really for the best.

It speaks to the state of mind that John is currently enjoying when getting essentially kidnapped by Sherlock's self-professed archnemesis doesn't even faze him (that it turns out to be Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's own brother, doesn't even really factor into anything important). It's exactly that sort of mental stability that leads him to shoot a serial killer from twenty yards away to save Sherlock, and it's exactly the sort of thing that just makes sense in regards to John's life right now.

He doesn't know what that says about him, and frankly, he doesn't care.

John enjoys, for once, being a step ahead of Sherlock. He doesn't think it's going to be happening very often from now on and he savors it while he has the opportunity. He sits back behind the crime scene tape, standing at a loose parade rest, and watches as Sherlock begins to connect the dots. It's really fascinating to watch when you're holding all of the cards. And sort of hilarious, too.

“They keep putting this blanket on me,” Sherlock complains. “Why do they keep putting this blanket on me?”

Lestrade chuckles. “Well, some of the guys wanted to get pictures with their phones,” he says, after the initial protestation about shock.

John smothers a chuckle himself and watches from the corner of his eye as Sherlock glances in his direction. He's fully intending on spending the night in jail but he thinks it might be worth it to watch this entire thing happen directly in front of him. For five _glorious_ minutes, John Watson is in possession of information that Sherlock Holmes does not have.

“You know – ignore me,” Sherlock says. “Sorry, just...yeah, ignore everything I just said.”

“Wait, what?” Lestrade says. John's a little stunned too, but he expects that Lestrade may be simply surprised that Sherlock is actively advocating people ignore him now.

“Nothing. I'm in shock. Look, I have a blanket, I'm in shock,” Sherlock says, standing up and walking toward John.

John smothers a giggle and makes every attempt to keep his face straight.

It sets the tone for their relationship, he thinks to himself later, as the two of them leave the crime scene.

“Dead body. Crime scene. We can't giggle at a crime scene,” he tells Sherlock, and they giggle anyway. Like schoolchildren.

Yeah, that was the moment that John realized he wanted to be friends with Sherlock Holmes.

 

Eventually things settle down into a routine. Sherlock solves crimes. John blogs about it. The hit counter on his blog slowly creeps up.

He thinks, right as they're beginning a truly tedious case from someone Sherlock knows, some banker who treats him dismissively enough that John bristles, that there are times when his life is just profoundly weird. Standing outside of an abandoned flat screaming insults at Sherlock Holmes through the mail slot (while fending off a transsexual prostitute, which is something he thinks he may actually _charge_ Sherlock for so he can afford the therapy) is one of those moments. He has to breathe deeply to avoid considering every choice he's ever made that led him to this exact confluence of events.

It is this that makes him think that he may just want to start having something resembling a normal life. He applies to a surgery and gets a job. He even takes a rather nice girl on a date – he doesn't plan on sleeping with her, but if there's any time in his life that John could use a good cuddle, it's now. And he needs all of the friends he could get. He likes Sarah, damn it. She's friendly and nice on the eyes and if he were into sex, he'd be into her.

He tries. He really does. Something resembling normalcy would make his life seem less upside-down. If he could just find something normal and grasp it he would know that everything is going to be okay.

Unfortunately, Sherlock manages to crash his date and even then the whole thing falls apart and he manages to get kidnapped. Frankly, he's surprised Sarah didn't immediately haul back and punch him.

“I don't even know why you tried with her,” Sherlock says later that night. Despite John being the doctor, Sherlock is patching him up, carefully daubing Nu-Skin on a cut on John's eyebrow. “We both know you weren't actually interested.”

John glares at him resentfully and hisses as the Nu-Skin takes effect. It stings like a motherfucker.

“Some people, Sherlock, want a normal life,” he says.

Sherlock harrumphs. “Not someone who chooses to be in _my_ life,” he says, as if the idea of a normal life is somehow offensive.

“No, I don't suppose those two things are exactly compatible,” John replies, exasperated.

Sherlock manages to look so damn smug that John sees it his way. It's unbearable.

 

The one-year anniversary of their signing of the lease goes by unremarked, and John is unsurprised. To be fair, a bomb has destroyed their living room (“gas leak,” his ass: Sherlock may believe that but John has seen enough bombs in his day to know generally what the fuck happened, if not the specifics). They have enough to be getting on with.

His flatmate is a maddening, hyperactive insomniac. He is a self-proclaimed sociopath and possibly as asexual as John himself is. He hates people and for some reason tolerates John. After that first date with Sarah, Sherlock has even been gracious enough not to comment directly to him about the dates he brings into their lives. He does not seem to include being nice to them in this concession, however, and John thinks that perhaps it's best this way anyway: none of his girlfriends have reached the inevitable third date stage where sex is on the table, and he tries to be exasperated with Sherlock, but he's sort of grateful nonetheless.

They're partners in crime, of sorts: Sherlock can bring about some really mind-bending deductions but a lot of the footwork would never get done if John weren't around to do it, and Sherlock offers to John that sense of excitement, of war, of running through the streets at 2 a.m. after a jewel thief.

He loves it.

 

John knows he's a soldier. He's not in this world to find some great universal truth: he plans on getting through life as best he can, getting the least amount of shit from people possible, and not starving to death. So when he does stumble across universal truths – and this happens a _lot_ living with Sherlock – it's always somewhat underwhelming and unexpected.

The first one is this: If you stand with your eyes wide open you will see things you don't necessarily want to know.

John does not possess Sherlock's very fine brain, but he is somewhat observant. It's a skill that got him through Afghanistan three times in mostly one piece. Taking that natural skillset and honing it under Sherlock's ill-mannered tutelage is an obvious step that needn't even be said aloud.

The problem, of course, is that now John can't stop seeing things: can't stop observing.

He doesn't know how Sherlock gets through the day. For the first time, John wonders if Sherlock is a sociopath by choice rather than misdiagnosis.

 

It starts small: he can tell when his dates are lying to him about small things. He can't always tell what it is they're lying _about_ , but he knows they're lying.

Then a bit bigger: he notices that a doctor and a nurse at the surgery are having an affair. Both of them are married to other people.

Finally he realizes that a patient is a sadist, and not of the S&M variety. At this point he texts Sherlock, who wanders down as if by accident (really, John almost believes that actually _is_ an accident that he's here: Sherlock can be wonderfully absentminded when it suits him).

After the patient leaves, Sherlock whirls around to look John in the eye.

“How did you know?” he says.

“I don't _know_ anything,” John replies, patiently. “He creeped me out and I called in the expert at out-creeping people.”

Sherlock grins manically. A week later a serial killer is behind bars.

 

The problem with powers of observation are that you can't shut them off. John starts to understand why Sherlock sometimes craves recreational drugs: maybe they'll shut off this steady stream of information.

John's nowhere near Sherlock's level. He might be able to help Lestrade on smaller cases, but for the really weird shit – well, that's still Sherlock's bailiwick.

A few times a week, though, since his practice at the surgery is nowhere near full-time, John will wander out to massively populated public areas (Leicester Square is a particular favorite of his) and just _observe_. Sometimes Sherlock comes with him, but John prefers it when he goes on his own.

He was never much of a people-watcher, but he finds it fascinating now that he can somewhat correctly interpret their behavior. He can't tell exactly what's going on unless people are being _really_ obvious about it, but he can usually tell who's had a bad day and who's planning to go off and do something stupid.

One day he saw a woman who is so inexorably _sad_ that he stops her.

“What?” she asks, bluntly staring him in the face. The full force of her sorrow hits him in the chest: this woman has lost something dear.

“N-nothing,” he says, hurrying away. What do you say in the face of that? It was grief, _fresh_ grief. John doesn't know if someone died or something else horrible happened.

The next morning her face is in the paper: she committed suicide. Post-partum depression after giving birth to a stillborn child.

John knows intellectually that it's not his fault, but he still wonders if he could have done something.


	3. honest, faithful, good

 

_Like fragments of a broken mind_

_I splinter by my own design_

 

The second universal truth is this: You should never, ever meet your heroes. 

Sherlock has upset him plenty in the past: he's a rude, arrogant, selfish child wrapped up in a pretty, pale, long-limbed package. He treats John's weaponry with lighthearted contempt and keeps severed body parts mixed in with the food. He has an oddly dismissive relationship with his furniture (and walls). So yes, John has been quite pissed off at Sherlock, quite often.

Nothing has prepared him for living with a self-professed sociopath. He thinks he's got Sherlock pinned down and nothing on this planet can prepare him for the wrench he feels when Sherlock tells him he doesn't care about the people who have died in Moriarty's little game.

“I've disappointed you,” his baritone voice rasps out.

“Well spotted,” John replies. “You really _can_ deduct everything.” The sarcasm is heavy in his voice.

“Heroes don't exist, John. Even if they did, I wouldn't be one,” Sherlock says. John suspects that it's the most honest thing Sherlock has ever said to him. Still, it pisses him off, especially when Sherlock correctly deduces that he's not going to help him.

He closes his eyes and briefly contemplates how uncomplicated his life would be if he just left. Moved out of 221B and away from Sherlock bloody Holmes.

“You won't leave,” Sherlock says, absentmindedly. 

 

_“How long have you been following me?”_

_“Since the start.”_

 

For some reason, that conversation plays back in John's head over and over on some sort of fucked-up loop as he's grabbed unceremoniously and shoved into a car. This isn't Mycroft's style: he likes people to come willingly. So John knows somehow that he's being kidnapped, and he has no idea why. 

An hour later he's in a wet-smelling room and a man in a suit is walking toward him. John looks up and recognizes him from somewhere. A few minutes of sifting through his memory gives him a name: Jim, from IT. Molly's boyfriend. The gay bloke who gave Sherlock his phone number.

“Jim?” John says. One of the men gave him a knock on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol, so he's still quite slow-witted.

The man's body language is totally different now, more languid. John is strongly reminded of a lion, rearing back and getting ready to pounce.

He chuckles. “I ought to have known that _you'd_ remember me,” he says. John tries to stand and finds that he's tied up. “ _Miiistahh_ Holmes wouldn't deign to notice a lowly IT worker, but honest, faithful, _good_ John Watson would.” Jim leans over and drags a finger down the side of John's face. It makes his skin crawl.

John wonders what kind of fucked up person would honestly consider him _good_. If you're comparing him to Sherlock, perhaps it's true, but one thing John has been learning lately is that he can't afford to lie to himself. With this brings a certain level of introspection and self-awareness: No, John is not _good_. If he were _good_ , he wouldn't be in league with Sherlock Holmes.

He's unceremoniously pulled up, his shoulder wrenching backwards. He clenches his teeth shut. 

He accepts the Semtex vest with little protest. He's as good as dead anyway at this point, no real use in fighting it. He wonders why he can't bring himself to say a little prayer, briefly, before coming to his own answer: God gave him his one wish already. God isn't going to answer him anymore.

There are men with guns surrounding him as Jim loads him up with explosives and winds an earpiece around his neck. Jim is happily humming, a terrifyingly cheerful counter-point to all of this. He's humming Ride of the Valkyries and John wants to punch Sherlock because he _shouldn't know_ Wagner from Bach or Beethoven.

Heaven save him from mad violinists.

“One day,” John had told Sherlock once before, after Sherlock had spent the night deducing John, “I am going to just spontaneously combust, and then where will you be?”

He had been joking, of course, but now that he's got the fall exclusive designer fashion in plastique draped about him and a delightful laser sight trained on him, he thinks it's less spontaneous and more preordained.

He's never going to be as good as Sherlock, of course, but he's learning things about deduction and observation, and he observes and then deduces that Sherlock is actually _hurt_ when John steps out from the locker room. He doesn't realize, of course, that John has explosives wrapped around him because John hasn't shown him yet – he thinks that John is Jim. For a brief second, he realizes that once again, he has knowledge that Sherlock does not have.

It's heady stuff.

Then he begins following the breathy, high-pitched, sing-song instructions in his ear and realization crashes down around Sherlock. The younger man begins to breathe again and John is honestly surprised that he stopped in the first place. John knows that his world is starting to revolve around Sherlock, but he's pretty certain that John's just a live-in blip on Sherlock's radar.

Sherlock is talking to Jim, who announces himself as Jim Moriarty. John's heart rate, usually so calm and steady, shoots through the roof. Moriarty, who Sherlock actually _does_ consider a sort of archnemesis, who Sherlock has been obsessing over for the last bloody year.

Staring right in their faces all this time. 

Sherlock keeps darting his glance over to John. _Focus, Sherlock,_ he thinks. _Focus on Moriarty. I'm not important._

Then again, John knows that Sherlock must be at least a _little_ concerned for him, or Moriarty wouldn't have taken him, of all people, as a hostage. 

The byplay between the two of them is almost flirtatious. This, John realizes, is _foreplay_ between two geniuses. The two of them are engaging in verbal foreplay while John has a bomb strapped to his chest.

If it weren't _Sherlock_ all over, he'd be more angry.

“People have died,” Sherlock is saying, and John glances at him. He's _actually_ remorseful. Sherlock Holmes actually gives something resembling a shit about the world around him.

John resists the urge to sink to his knees in shock.

“That's what people _do!_ ” Moriarty screams. Like he's angry at Sherlock for not realizing this earlier on in the game. 

John's arms are tired, but Moriarty hasn't give him the go-ahead to put them down and if he's going to die, he's not taking his best friend with him. Sherlock's eyes dart to him again. “Are you alright?” he asks, softly.

John doesn't move.

He can sense Moriarty coming up behind him. It's a soldier thing, and he's so close. He could take him out right now.

“You can talk,” Jim says. 

John still doesn't talk, instead catching Sherlock's eye and nodding slightly. He starts looking around him, calculating. Sherlock probably knows what he's up to, but he doesn't care.

After a while, Jim passes him and John takes that moment to tackle him from behind. “Run, Sherlock,” he gasps out. 

Jim starts to laugh.

“How cute!” he says. John can tell from the way he tenses up that he wants to clap his hands in glee. “You've shown your hand!” A red dot appears on Sherlock's head and John's heart stops. He lets go immediately and stares at that dot like he can somehow fix it.

This is what his life has come to, he thinks in a daze. The one person on the planet that John Watson can form an emotional bond with is a self-diagnosed sociopath with an honest-to-God archenemy. This doesn't happen to real people, he thinks fervently. This is not _normal_.

There's not a psychiatrist in the world who can fix this. There aren't enough _drugs_ in the world.

Jim has continued talking. “I'll burn you,” he says. “I'll burn the _heart_ out of you.”

Sherlock's eyes dart to John. _Stupid_ , John curses to himself. _Rookie mistake, Sherlock_.

Jim leaves whistling. John wishes he'd paid more attention to what he actually said – he may need to know later on. The red dots are gone and Sherlock's gaze transfers to him and it hits him like a ton of bricks. 

“Are you alright?” he's saying, over and over. John lets his shoulders relax. Maybe he'll live through this after all. He lets out an explosive sigh of relief. 

Sherlock is...doing something. Undressing him? _What?_ No, no, he's pulling the bomb off and throwing it. Thank _Christ_. John's vision grays out momentarily and he sinks to the floor in a kneeling position. “Christ,” he mutters, leaning against the tile. “Jesus. Jesus Christ, Sherlock.”

The taller man is pacing now, scratching his head with John's own gun. John's gun. He's going to murder him for that later, but for now he needs to know that everything is fine. “Are you alright?” John asks.

“Me? Yeah, I'm fine,” Sherlock says, pacing more. “That..that thing you did. That you offered to do. That..that was. That was good.”

John blinks. Sherlock has just thanked him for trying to save his life. Will wonders never cease?

“I'm glad no one saw that,” he says, tongue and lips running on automatic now that he's out of danger. His voice is shaky and he knows he probably sounds somewhat breathless. He doesn't care. “You ripping my clothes off in a darkened athletic complex? People will talk.”

Sherlock looks at him and begins to chuckle. Sherlock has a nice laugh, although it's a rare one. He has a deep, cultured-sounding baritone voice and John likes listening to him talk. Sherlock should give up being a consulting detective and record audiobooks for a living, he thinks.

“People will do little else,” Sherlock says, smiling at him. The dots reappear then and John closes his eyes in resignation. 

“Fuck,” he mutters. Sherlock looks at him, once again giving away his hand. John wants to punch him for being so human and fallible right now.

He gives him a significant look, as if to say, Y _ou're my best friend, Sherlock, and I want you to come out of this alive so for the love of everything that's holy, stop acting like you give a shit in front of the one person in the world who can take us both out._

Sherlock nods and turns around. He's aiming at John's coat. There's a lovely moment of tension and then Moriarty's phone rings.

He pulls it out. His ringtone is the Bee Gees.

“You have got to be fucking _kidding_ me,” John says under his breath. “You're going to take a business call at a time like this?” He raises his eyes heavenward. “This is insane. _Real people don't operate like this._ ”

Sherlock looks at him, right eyebrow raised. “Seriously, Sherlock, this is fucking ridiculous,” John says. He's afraid to move for Sherlock's sake. “Just shoot him, _Jesus Christ_.”

“I wouldn't,” Jim says, holding his finger out at John and grinning. He turns back to his phone call. Sherlock tilts his head at John as if to say, _See what I mean?_

“Shut up,” John cautions him, holding his finger out warningly.

It's over before John can really grasp the situation. Moriarty and Sherlock eye-fuck some more and then Moriarty leaves and the snipers go away and John wants to fucking strangle his best friend.

“You could have ended this, Sherlock!” he exclaims.

“Hmmm,” is Sherlock's only response.

 

Sherlock is not a very demonstrative person in general, John knows. He's not affectionate in the slightest and the fact that he was willing to pull a bomb off of John speaks measures. John doesn't know if Sherlock is capable of actual attraction but at the very least he knows that Sherlock is affectionate toward him (as affectionate as Sherlock is capable of being. The bomb thing was practically a love note). 

As it stands, John adores his flatmate and best friend and is absolutely willing to give his life for him, but he's an asexual with impotence problems and he hopes that Sherlock isn't capable of crushes. He bandages his best friend up and gets him into his pyjamas and dressing gown and installs him on the couch to watch crap telly while John makes tea. At the back of his mind he is thinking, _Do not fall in love with me, Sherlock Holmes, because I can't go there right now._

John avoids the head in the fridge and makes Sherlock a cup of tea exactly the way he likes it and sits down next to him. He's the most _not_ -composed right now that John has ever seen him – there's a fine tremor flowing through his frame and his eyes are staring off into the distance, unfocussed. 

“You alright?” John asks, setting the tea in front of him.

“Hmm,” Sherlock replies, absently. He looks down. “Ah. Thank you,” he says, grabbing the tea and taking a sip.

John's worried, because that's what soldiers do – they worry about the people they're supposed to be protecting. His job since he met Sherlock and his erstwhile brother has been to protect this madman from his own stupidity. Sherlock told him when they first met that he sometimes doesn't speak for days on end, but so far after a year of association, John's never seen him quiet for more than a few minutes at a time.

Sherlock sets the tea down and lets his eyes go back to being unfocussed. It's actually really disconcerting, so John grabs a book and leans back, figuring that if Sherlock feels the need to talk he'll know.

John's gotten really into his book so he doesn't realize exactly when Sherlock falls asleep next to him. The younger man doesn't snore; the first indication John has is that his flatmate's slumped-over form falls over to lean into him.

John sighs and sets his book down, careful not to wake Sherlock up cuz lord knows he needs as much sleep as he'll let himself get. He carefully reaches over and pulls a blanket over Sherlock's form, then settles down with his arm slung over the other man.

Sometimes John really does just need a good cuddle, even if it is from his mad best friend.


	4. the third universal truth

 

_I know how this will end but I'm starting up again_

_Turned around, inside out, cuz this way takes me nowhere_

 

It's another day and John has just finished up at the surgery. It's getting dark and he heads out to Leicester Square to people-watch.

If he stays too long Sherlock will text him, but he feels like his powers of observation have been dulled beyond belief over the last few days. He knows that some good old-fashioned introspection is needed these days.

He's got another girlfriend now, a really nice woman who he doesn't actually want to hurt. He thinks that in time he could actually fall in love with her if he worked at it, but there's still never going to be any sexual attraction.

She's part of the problem, actually – she's driven home to him the fact that he's willing to let these women into his life, willing to let them love him if they want, but he's not willing to offer Sherlock the same. He needs to figure out what the issue is because he's never really considered himself strictly heteroromantic. Romance, in fact, has only come into his life recently, and mainly because he wants the world to understand that he and Sherlock Holmes are not a couple.

After an hour of observation and thinking (that woman crossing the street is on her way to have an affair, John knows, but he's not sure how he knows and he almost wishes Sherlock was there to tell him), he's come to a simple conclusion: He cares too much about Sherlock.

Sherlock is his best friend. He cares more about him than anyone in the world, including his alcoholic sister. And because of that he's not willing to get into anything that could even remotely be construed as a relationship with the younger man, because eventually everything would break apart. 

This is the third universal truth: To thine own self be true. John _knows_ what he is, _knows_ that he's capable of doing horrible things as well as good.

If Sherlock really does have a bit of a crush on him, he's going to just continue on as normal. And if he doesn't, well...same thing, really. There's nothing to do except never, ever do anything to make Sherlock think there could be something there. He loves Sherlock as much as someone like him is capable, but John would be an idiot to believe that it would be enough. 

Satisfied with his deductions about himself, John stands up just as his phone alert goes off. It's Sherlock.

_Out of bread. SH_

John laughs to himself and starts off to the store.

 

“It's like living in the Twilight zone, living with you,” John mentions to Sherlock as they're riding in a taxi toward Irene Adler's place. “I just sat at Buckingham Palace with my best friend sitting next to me wrapped up in a sheet. And then we had tea.” John shakes his head. “This doesn't _happen_ to normal people, Sherlock.”

Sherlock quirks his lip upward. “We aren't normal people, John,” he says, and John thinks this is probably a reasonable assessment of the situation.

One mock fistfight and several excellent deductions later and John is staring Irene Adler in the...well. 

“Someone loves you,” she purrs to Sherlock. “If I had to hit you in the face, I would stay away from the teeth and nose too.”

Sherlock's glance flicks toward John, who rolls his eyes. “Do you think you could put some clothes on, please?”

“Uncomfortable, Doctor Watson?” she says, accepting Sherlock's jacket and smiling like the cat who got the goddamned canary. John doesn't answer, but yeah, he's damned uncomfortable – for some reason, undressing Sherlock and redressing him in his pyjamas, or staring down a speculum to see a patient's cervix...none of these are as intimate and terrifying as the seduction that Irene Adler oozes. 

If he were less impotent he'd probably be sporting a raging erection right now. He's slightly surprised that Sherlock isn't, but then again, that's Sherlock for you. If he _did_ have one, no one would know.

While Irene goes on about the pictures and flirts with Sherlock, John does his level best to patch up the damage he did to his friend's cheek. Then he leaves the room because, frankly, it's uncomfortable sitting there in between Sherlock and his latest puzzle toy.

An hour later he's trying to explain to Lestrade why Sherlock shot a gun off into the air and how they came to be in this position, which is that a madwoman has stolen Sherlock's coat and run off with an item of national importance and in the process somehow drugged his flatmate. Sherlock is quite loopy and keeps muttering about boomerangs and breasts. 

Lestrade videotapes it. John can't really blame him.

 

John has gone through three separate girlfriends since they met Irene Adler, but he's finally just decided to swear them off after this last one accused him of dating Sherlock. They're never happy when they realize they won't occupy the most important spot in his life.

Sherlock's fascination with this woman doesn't end with her death, either, and he finds him composing a piece of music on his violin that John is ninety percent certain is in her honor. John knows he's been awake for two solid days and is fairly certain that despite sweeping the house, he didn't find all of the cocaine.

He has a whispered conversation with Mrs. Hudson before he leaves on New Years Eve. “Has he ever had, you know...a girlfriend? Or a boyfriend? Something?”

“I couldn't tell you, dear,” Mrs. Hudson says. “I mean, how would you be able to tell?”

John chuckles and shakes his head. “Well, keep an eye on him, right?”

She nods and John gives her a small kiss on the cheek before leaving.

 

John has been on the battlefield. The anger and resentment he felt the first time someone shot at him left him shaking for days. These days he's often angry for other reasons – exploded microwaves, long silences, violin at 3 a.m. Anger is a fairly normal part of his life nowadays, even if it's the quiet, simmering sort.

None of these comes close to how angry he is the moment Irene Adler, who is supposed to be dead, walks in front of him.

“Tell him you're alive,” he says. It's the first thing he can think of – Sherlock was devastated by her so-called death and he cannot stand to see him in pain. He _needs_ to know.

She looks at him and thankfully doesn't insult his intelligence by asking whom. “He'd come after me,” she explains.

“I'll come after you if you don't,” he says, clenching his hand into a fist. She gives him a once-over and smiles.

“I believe you,” she replies.

“Tell him,” he insists.

He feels an overwhelming need to scream at someone, or hit something, or shoot something. His anger is never constructive, and right now if Sherlock were there with his bloody violin he'd take it and splinter the whole thing over his knee. He wants to destroy something beautiful.

She pulls out her phone and reads a list of text messages out to him. Something reaches through his anger and confusion and strikes his errant sense of humor – the thing within him that makes him laugh over dead bodies with Sherlock.

“You... _flirted_ with Sherlock Holmes?” he asks, disbelieving.

“Flirted _at_ ,” she corrects him. “He never replied.”

“Sherlock replies to _everything_ ,” he says. “He'd outlive _God_ trying to have the last word.” Understatement of the year.

She smiles. “Does that make me special?” He doesn't like her. Sexuality oozes out of her pores and stands in stark relief against his asexuality. It makes him feel unnatural and he doesn't like it one bit.

“I don't know,” he snarls. “Probably.”

“Jealous?” she asks, raising her eyebrow.

“We're _not a couple_ ,” he begins.

“Yes, you are,” she corrects. He wants to strangle her, wants to tell her that she has no idea what she's talking about, and to _please_ shag his best friend so that he'll stop composing sad music and being an asshole.

“Who the _hell_ knows about Sherlock Holmes,” John says, angry, “But in case anyone out there is listening, I'm _not actually gay_.” He's not actually anything, but he can't imagine trying to explain that to this woman, this aberration of nature, this...demoness.

“Well, I _am_ ,” she says, sending a text message to Sherlock with a flourish. “Look at us both.”

That stops John cold.

Off to the side he hears a moan, and his spine straightens of it's own accord. That's Sherlock's text message ringtone for Irene, which means that Sherlock is here, listening to him talk about him. Sherlock is here, staring at a woman he thought dead.

_Shit._

Heart pounding, he begins to go toward the sound. Irene stops him.

“I wouldn't,” she says. Her lips quirk up sadly.

 

John has been putting in a lot of hours at the surgery, because he desperately wants to get away from Sherlock when he goes into Irene mode. John doesn't know what exactly is fueling Sherlock's obsession with the woman, but he doesn't like him when he's allocating his mental resources in her direction. When he's been thinking about her he goads John, picks him apart.

One night not too long ago he'd been in an Irene sort of mood and it wound up coming out that he, Sherlock, finds asexuality to be _boring_. He didn't say who he was talking about – he didn't _need_ to.

John stood up stiffly and left the flat. He didn't come back for two days and when he did return Sherlock had found some sort of hallucinogen somewhere. He thinks probably LSD, which admittedly is probably better than cocaine. When he came inside Sherlock was nowhere to be found and an hour of searching finally led John to the bathroom. Sherlock was passed out, soaking wet, in the tub, and insane scribbles and drawings in crayon littered the porcelain around him. It had taken him the better part of the evening to get the detective out of the tub, changed into dry clothing, and into bed.

John is about to reach the end of his rope and more than anything he just wants Irene Adler to fall off the face of the planet.

A few days later John comes inside and finds Sherlock staring at his bed. “Hey, Sherlock,” he says, walking toward him.

“We have a client,” Sherlock replies, never breaking eye contact with whatever he was staring at.

“What, in your bedroom?” John asks. He walks in and there's Irene Adler, asleep on Sherlock's bed. “Ah,” he says. He wants to strangle her but somehow he thinks Sherlock might stop him.

In silent retribution he imagines her in the throes of arsenic poisoning while he makes her tea.

 

The next few months are a whirlwind to John. Irene Adler is dead again, for real this time, although he suspects that Sherlock knows something about that too. They've gone to Dartmoor and back investigating a case that involved military-created hallucinogens and now they're arresting his best friend in the middle of their living room.

“This is ridiculous,” he says to Lestrade. “He hasn't done anything.”

“It's alright, John,” Sherlock tries to tell him. He's unflappably calm and John wants to grab him by that ridiculously-wound scarf and strangle him.

“No, it's not alright,” John says.

“Don't interfere,” Lestrade says. “Or I'll arrest you too.”

They lead Sherlock away. It's really too bad, John thinks, because he's pretty sure that Sherlock would have _enjoyed_ seeing him punch the chief superintendent. 

It's not the first time he's been thrown against a police vehicle, but it is the first time he's actually been arrested for a violent crime. For some reason he's less afraid than he thought he'd be. 

“Joining me?” Sherlock says, archly. The amusement in his voice is apparent, as is the double-entendre. 

“Apparently it's against the law to chin the chief superintendent,” John explains. The police officers chain him to Sherlock which, he thinks grimly, is a rookie mistake.

“A bit awkward, this,” Sherlock notes. 

“Yeah, we're not going to be able to make bail very easily,” John says.

“I was thinking about our daring escape,” Sherlock says. For some reason, John isn't surprised.

 

“Take my hand,” Sherlock is saying. His breathing is heavy and John can see absolutely no reason for him to take Sherlock's hand, but he humors his best friend and does so anyway.

“Now people will definitely talk,” he says.

Sherlock is tall and gangly and John is not. It's not in Sherlock's manner to take another person's shortcomings into account and he almost rips John's arm off while hopping a fence.

“Sherlock!” John exclaims, grabbing the other man by the lapels of his infuriating jacket. “We're going to have to coordinate!”

Time freezes.

John's face is mere inches from Sherlock's. This close he can see the younger man's pupils, which are dilated from the rush of adrenaline. His breath ghosts over John's face. They are strangely still holding hands, and John cannot figure out how Sherlock managed to jump a ruddy fence while holding his hand.

Jesus Christ, he's never noticed how _beautiful_ Sherlock is. 

Sherlock leans in and John feels his eyes fluttering closed. Sherlock's lips press against his and suddenly they're kissing and for the first time in a decade John actually feels a spike of desire flow through him. He blinks and steps back, stunned, and then Sherlock is guiding him in getting over the stupid fence and they're racing off.


	5. labels are stupid

 

_One of these days the ground will drop out from beneath your feet_

_One of these days your heart will stop and play it's final beat_

 

It has been the worst 24 hours of John's life and he has a horrible feeling that his hours are about to get even worse.

His phone is ringing and it's Sherlock. He's right outside of St. Bart's and his best friend is standing on the roof.

Later he'll remember every second of that conversation but right now all he can think of is that his best friend, the only person who's been able to stir him romantically in a decade and the most frustrating, beautiful, wonderful person, is getting ready to commit suicide and he doesn't know _why_.

This is the last universal truth: You should never forget to tell someone you love them.

John learns this the day that Sherlock jumps from the roof of St. Bart's. Sherlock was a brilliant man (because no one could ever convince John that Sherlock was anything other than a mad genius, _his_ mad genius; his wonderful, _broken_ mad genius) but John is fairly certain that Sherlock didn't know how much he meant to John.

All of this flows through his mind as he's trying to crawl off of the street and meet Sherlock. He wants so desperately to see him before he dies, to say goodbye, to tell him he loves him. He runs and there's a crowd, but he's too late.

Sherlock Holmes is dead.

 

John knows he should probably get up, take a shower, go looking for a job. But he doesn't really see any need for it. Mrs. Hudson keeps getting rent checks, the bills keep getting paid, and money keeps appearing in his bank account, so he's just going to sit here and wallow in his sorrow, thank you very much.

His therapist wants him to say the things he never said to Sherlock, but Sherlock isn't there to hear them so it seems like it's a moot point.

Once a week he gets up. He bathes, shops, goes to Sherlock's grave, and then to his therapists'. Then he goes back to 221B for another six days. 

Sometimes when he wakes up for a brief, glorious moment he forgets. He forgets that Sherlock is dead and he forgets that he's mourning. Then it slams back into him and he doubles over in almost-physical pain. 

The days bleed together. It's been a month before he finally decides to go back to taking daily showers, three months before he starts leaving the house with any regularity. 

He wishes he'd just let Sherlock love him.

He is plagued with erotic dreams about his dead flatmate. For the first time in a very long time he's taken to masturbating. It's depressing that the one person on the planet he actually wants to fuck is dead.

He mentions this to his therapist at one point. She says that labels are stupid; John is surprised to agree with her. 

After six months he starts picking through Sherlock's belongings. He starts in his room, which looks almost like a bomb has gone off, at odds with how neat Sherlock normally kept it. He doesn't intend on getting rid of a single thing; he just wants to know what's here. It feels like he could be closer to him by looking through his things.

He's leaning over, picking up a sock, when he catches a whiff of the bed. It smells like Sherlock's soap and deodorant. 

John curls up on Sherlock's bed and, for the first time since he watched him plummet six stories to the ground, John really, truly cries.

 

John wonders, after a year, if the reason the money keeps coming in is because Mycroft feels guilty. He has enough in his account at this point to retire, and still, the weekly payments keep coming in.

He's awake. He's dressed. He'd even showered earlier, and gone for a haircut (he'd needed it; he hadn't gotten a haircut since Sherlock's...fall. He looked like a damn hippy). Because today is the day that Lestrade's hard work over the last year or so has paid off and Sherlock is going to be declared posthumously innocent of all charges.

They found Moriarty's body on the roof of St. Bart's the day Sherlock had jumped. He'd even had a wallet with actual identification in there, and there were enough loopholes in his story that Lestrade had ordered an investigation.

There was a tribunal and today is the day they are going to announce it. John needs to be there, if only to see the sour looks on the faces of Anderson and Donovan.

Lestrade picks him up and John is thankful that he says nothing about the extra lines and gray hair that John is fairly certain he's gained over the last year.

He's getting out of the car and there are flashbulbs everywhere: John has been careful to keep out of the public eye since everything happened, and the press is interested. He ignores them. They're unimportant. They are, for lack of a better word, _boring_. 

He looks across the street from the courthouse and there's a flash of a tall man in a coat. John blinks and he's gone.

Must be imagining things.

 

John hasn't changed anything about Sherlock's room, really, except for neatening it up, but he sleeps there every night. It doesn't smell like Sherlock anymore, but he feels better there, more secure. 

Sherlock must have done something to his old laptop because he hasn't been able to do anything with it since the Fall. He'd been using Sherlock's netbook to go on the internet, but it finally crapped out last week. After the tribunal yesterday he went to Tesco and got a new laptop and an external hard drive casing so he could retrieve his old files – John has an extensive music collection, old saved blog posts, and some personal journal entries that he'd like to keep.

He's sitting in Sherlock's bed, unscrewing the casing to his old laptop, when he hears the buzzer go off. Groaning to himself – it's quite late – he pads out to the living room, donning his dressing gown, and then downstairs.

It's Lestrade.

“Look,” Lestrade says, running his hand through his hair. “I've got a murder and I could use your insight on it.”

John eyes him. “I'm not him, Greg,” he says. 

“I know you're not,” Lestrade replies. “But you got pretty good at it at the end there and I _know_ you've been practicing. I saw you at Leicester the other day.”

John sighs and opens the door wider for Lestrade to walk in. “Fill me in on the details while I get ready,” he says. The two of them head upstairs and Lestrade doesn't say anything when John walks into Sherlock's old room to get dressed.

 

Two days later he's helped Lestrade solve the tricky case. It's not something he plans on doing regularly but he was happy to help. It was something to do, and it reminded him of Sherlock.

He finally gets around to pulling the hard drive from his old laptop, slipping it into the external enclosure and booting it up as external storage. He can see the old operating system files and his own personal files, but there's also a hidden directory with Sherlock's name on it.

John is wary. The old computer never started up no matter how much he charged it and he's afraid there may be some sort of malware in there. He runs every virus scanner and every spyware detector he can find on it, and it comes up clean.

He transfers it to the new computer along with the rest of his files. 

 

The days really begin to run into each other; John's been hired on by the Scotland Yard as a coroner and consultant, and this unfortunately means he's got to keep something resembling regular hours. The money from Mycroft keeps coming in, but John doesn't care: he has to keep busy _somehow_.

The long and short of it is that he's been kept so occupied with his new job that he doesn't have a chance to sit down and look at the old hard drive contents until about a month later. He carefully sorts his music to where it needs to go, even downloading a program to organize the tags on the individual files. He sorts through his blog backups and entries, and while he deletes some things, he finds other things that amuse him and he puts those into his documents folder.

Finally, at the very end of his weekend, he goes to open the Sherlock directory.

It's password-protected. Of _course_ it is. Why wouldn't it be? This is Sherlock, possibly one of the most paranoid people John ever knew. Of course his _hidden_ folder on John's computer would be password-protected.

John doesn't know why he didn't see this coming.

John's not a genius like Sherlock was. He doesn't know what password he may have used. He doesn't know if the attempts to get in are limited, and he definitely doesn't know what passwords Sherlock may have used. For all he knows, it could be a random string of letters and numbers.

He clicks on “Password Hint.”

_Nice try, John. If you really want in here, you're going to have to work for it._

John sighs.

 

Over the next few weeks John tries several different passwords – there isn't a restriction, it would seem, on the number of password attempts. None of them work, and he makes note of every one he's tried.

He tries every variation of Irene's name, he tries Sherlock's own full name. He tries esoteric seventeenth century musical composers and modern-day electronics inventors. He even types in “Mycroft Bloody Holmes” one day.

It doesn't work. None of them do.

 

After a year and a half of missing Sherlock, John starts journaling again. Nothing public like his old blog, no; he instead re-downloads RedNotebook, a private journaling program he'd used to organize his blog posts before publishing them back when Sherlock was still alive. He fills the program with thoughts, pictures, memories. He's desperately terrified he's going to forget things about Sherlock. 

His therapist, who he's still seeing, encourages this. Finally, one day John breaks down and writes down the things he'd kept to himself for so long:

“I miss him every day,” he writes. “I feel like a widower because Sherlock was more to me than my best friend.”

“It's taking me so long to deal with this, because it's like I've lost a lover instead of a friend.”

“I loved Sherlock, as best as I could. If we'd had more time...”

John stares at these entries, password-protects them, and moves on.

 

“Are you sure?” Lestrade is saying. John nods.

“Definitely,” he says, pointing. “Don't you remember the Pink Lady, the first case Sherlock ever brought me in on? Same thing, with the jewelry. I'm willing to bet that her lover killed her.”

Lestrade takes some notes. John glances over to the side of the crime scene, boredly, and does a double-take.

For a brief second he thought he'd seen Sherlock.

 

“I thought I saw him today,” John says to his therapist. “I was at a crime scene and for just a second I thought he was there.” He sighs. “Isn't this supposed to go away after a while?”

“It will, John,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “You were close to Sherlock; you've even admitted that you loved him. It's going to take you a while to deal with this. He was an everyday part of your life.”

John has stopped hoping. He's been alone for a year and a half, and he's stopped hoping that Sherlock managed to fake his own death. But every time he thinks he sees him – and it's been happening more often than not – that brief flare of hope always rushes up to greet him, to be met with crushing disappointment. 

It's almost nauseating in it's totality.

 

When John gets home that night his flat has been broken into. His eyes sweep the room, cataloging it from when he looked around this morning. He doesn't have an eidetic memory (that was Sherlock's forte) but he's managed to improve his recall skills significantly over the last few months. He knows immediately the things that have been stolen: Yorick (the skull), Sherlock's violin, and a jackknife that Sherlock had stabbed into the mantle the day the two of them had moved into the flat. 

He calls Lestrade and reports it, but tells him not to bother sending someone to look at everything: there's no evidence to find.

That night he tries the passwords Yorick, Stradivarius, and Mozart. None of those work, either.

 

The next month Lestrade calls him to a crime scene that is baffling. A murder with zero evidence, no motive, and nothing missing. 

John doesn't know what to make of it, but he recognizes the man: he's one of the several hitmen that moved in surrounding 221B Baker Street the week of Sherlock's death. The name is unfamiliar, but the tattoos rather give him away. 

John is stumped as well. He's not getting anything from that scene, and there's not even a murder weapon. A tox panel comes back negative for everything. As far as John can tell, this thirty year old man died of natural causes: his heart just suddenly stopped. 

A flash to a memory, a case with Sherlock, makes him double back on his inspection of the body before consigning it to a crematory: he carefully inspects the dead man's feet. There, he finds his only clue: two tiny burn marks in between the toes. They're small enough that they almost look like bug bites, but they are unmistakably burns.

“Someone electrocuted him with something high-powered, and then they cleaned up after themselves,” John tells Lestrade. “I have no idea what the electrocuted him with, but they fully intended on hiding this from us. If I hadn't done the autopsy, there's a really good chance we'd have destroyed the evidence. Whoever did this is depending on us overlooking this.”

Lestrade frowns. “You've documented this, then, right?”

John nods.

“Destroy the body, but keep copies of the documentation,” Lestrade continues. “Let's not make a big deal about this. Maybe the killer will get confident after the body's gone.”

 

A few days later a woman's body is found. She isn't killed the same way, but it's an equally baffling case and John only finds cause of death when examining her spine very, very carefully. There, at the base of her neck, is a puncture mark, carefully filled with Nu-Skin. Someone has injected something directly into her spinal cord.

A tox screen of her spinal fluid comes back positive for lidocane: someone injected an analgesic used in epidurals into her spinal cord, far too high up and entirely in the wrong part of the spine. 

Lestrade gives him the same instructions: keep documentation, destroy the body.

 

Things quiet down for another month. John spends most of it journaling and trying to get into Sherlock's folder. He tries several passwords and none of them work.

“Goddamn you, Sherlock,” he says, leaning back in his chair and wincing. “You always had to be so fucking _clever_ , didn't you?

John can almost hear him reply.

 

Almost a month to the day of the last one, John gets called to a coroner call for the last of the assassins that had been posted around his and Sherlock's flat. It's a very average looking man with shoulder-length dirty blond hair.

“Sebastian Moran,” Lestrade tells him. “Mycroft Holmes says he was as close to a right-hand man that Moriarty had.”

“And now he's dead,” John says, narrowing his eyes. There's something going on here, and if he could just connect the dots in the right order he thinks he could actually see the big picture. There's so many variables, though.

“Why am I here, then, Greg?” John asks. He points. “It's obvious that he was killed with a knife to the heart, plain old-fashioned stabbing.”

“Well, that's part of it,” Greg says. “We do need a TOD to move the body so I'll need you to get on that, but the big thing is...well, look at the knife,” he says.

John determines that the time of death was approximately five hours before this, and then takes the time to examine the knife.

It's the knife that up until a few months ago was residing in his mantle.

His heart stops.

“This is my knife,” he says, quietly. “Or rather, it was Sherlock's and then it was mine and then it was stolen from my flat.”

Greg nods. “We know. We found your fingerprint on it, and the only reason you're not a suspect is because you reported it stolen.”

“So whoever broke into my apartment is the one who's been killing off these assassins,” John hazards a guess.

“That's what I think, yeah,” Greg says, scratching at his head. “Maybe some sort of obsessed fan?”

John frowns. “Maybe. I _really_ don't like the idea of an obsessed fan breaking into my flat.”

“Look, we're going to post a security detail down Baker Street,” Lestrade continues, as if John hadn't spoken. “Just for a few days, to make sure you and Mrs. Hudson are safe.”

John nods, feeling slightly lightheaded. 

 

 


	6. a snide sherlockian sort of tone

 

_No, no matter how far we've come_

_I can't wait to see tomorrow_

_No matter how far we've come I_

_I can't wait to see tomorrow_

_With you_

 

It's been a long week, mainly because the only other coroner for the Yard got assigned to the Moran case, which meant that John had to take almost every other dead body in London. He sits back in his chair, relieved. He goes through and forcibly makes every muscle in his body relax. 

A sigh escapes from his throat. Without really thinking – without opening his eyes, really – he grabs for his laptop and pulls it toward him. It's been a week since he tried to get at Sherlock's files and he figures he should probably keep at it.

He tries a few things off the top of his head, even attempting to put Pi in to the 20th place. No dice.

He stares at the password box for a few moments, his eyebrows creasing together. Finally he laughs and, for vanity's sake, types in his own name: “John Hamish Watson.”

To his surprise, the password box disappears and the folder opens.

“You've got to be fucking kidding me,” John informs the laptop. It simply sits there, being a computer and thus inanimate. 

He shakes his head ruefully and looks in the folder. There is a single file, and it's a RedNotebook journal. 

He regards the file suspiciously, and stands up. He's going to need tea for this, he thinks.

 

John spends the better part of the night reading through Sherlock's journal entries. Some of them are just random scribbles, things he wrote just because he happened to have snagged John's laptop, and some of them are intense journal entries describing his thought processes, the cases they're working on, or his thoughts about the world around him. John started at the beginning, which was actually shortly after they met each other.

_I thought John was interested in me when we first met,_ Sherlock had written. _But now, after considering the evidence, I think he may be asexual, or at the very least have an erectile dysfunction of some sort. It's not the first time I've been wrong about something,_ and John thinks this sentence in a snide Sherlockian sort of tone, _but I think this is probably better than a sex-obsessed flatmate. He still insists on dating women._

John laughs and makes fresh tea.

 

By morning he hasn't slept and is most of the way through the journal entries. It was a startling insight into Sherlock's inner workings, and worth every last second of reading time. He doesn't even care that he's going to wind up going into work on no sleep.

There's one last entry, and John clicks on it before realizing the date on it.

_John;_

_I want to apologize for everything I'm currently putting you through. I can see you from here, passed out on the couch. You really shouldn't drink so much._

_I want you to know that if I could have done this any other way, I would have. Moriarty gave me no choices: I either jump and kill myself off in disgrace, or I allow his assassins to kill the only three people I care about in this world. They were after you, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade, and I couldn't let them do that._

_I hate that I have to keep you in the dark, all of you, but I have to take care of this. I'm working with Irene (I'm afraid both you and Mycroft were wrong about her death, but then again, you're both wrong about mine as well) and we're going to bring down the rest of Moriarty's criminal empire. When it's finished, we can both come back to life. I look forward to seeing you again, even if it is several years down the road._

_SH_

John is frozen, his heart pounding. Several facts collide within his mind, with a roaring noise that John associates with rage at Sherlock.

The date on the entry is a solid week after Sherlock jumped. His computer hasn't worked since about then. 

Moriarty's assassins have been taken down, one by one, over the last month and a half. 

At each crime scene, the method of death is different, but almost undetectable. There's no evidence tying anyone to the crime scene, except for the knife that had been stolen directly from John's flat.

John keeps seeing tall Sherlock-esque men from the corner of his eye.

It all comes together in one blinding moment:

_Sherlock is alive, and he's killing off Moriarty's men._

He stands up and slams his hand into the side table. “ _Goddamn_ you, Sherlock Holmes!”

 

He immediately takes the computer to work and shows the entry to Lestrade. He shows him the entire journal, despite the embarrassingly private information kept in it. He wants him to understand that this is authentic.

“You just found it today?” Greg says, rubbing his eyes. “How...look, this can't even be possible.”

“Yes, it can,” John says, evenly. “Who produced the death certificate? Who did the autopsy?”

“M—Oh good _Christ_ ,” Greg says, standing up and beginning to pace. “Molly Hooper, of course, because she was the coroner on at the time. And if Sherlock had ever asked her for _anything_ she'd have come running.”

“Exactly,” John says. His voice has gone flat. “Sherlock may have faked his own death, and if anyone knows how, it's Molly Hooper.”

 

Molly is very quietly brought in for questioning. John doesn't get to ask questions, but he does get to sit in the room while Lestrade determinedly breaks down every barrier in poor Molly's facade. Eventually she's in tears, and she's admitted that she faked Sherlock's death certificate. 

She turns and looks at John, who is staring at her impassively from the side of the room, arms crossed. “I'm _sorry_ , John. I'm _so_ sorry.” The tears aren't fake, John knows, but he hates her a bit anyway.

He says nothing, just turns and walks out of the room.

 

The next morning he opens his eyes and is confronted with a dead man's face.

Sherlock is sitting cross-legged on the floor, impassively staring at him. “There was no need to make Molly cry, John.”

John ignores him and instead gets up and prepares for his day. He pretends that Sherlock is not there because after all of this time he doesn't know whether to kiss him or kill him, and he really thinks he should have some tea in him before he makes that decision.

Finally, he's got some food and drink in him and he regards Sherlock steadily. The silence between them grows in length until John imagines that it's a chasm of some sort. If he spoke now, would Sherlock even be able to hear him?

“I find myself torn,” John says, his voice almost startling him. Sherlock merely raises an eyebrow, so John continues. “Half of me wants to throw myself at your feet and thank anything holy that you're alive. The other half of me wants to throttle you.”

Sherlock quirks a lip. His hair is shorter, John notices, and it's been bleached at some point in the recent past because the roots have only just begun to grow out. 

“I expected you to hit me,” Sherlock admits. “I was prepared for it. I probably even deserve it.”

“You know that you're wanted – quietly, mind – for questioning. They've reversed your death certificate, but they're doing it under the press radar.”

Sherlock nods. “I figured as much once Molly told me what had happened.” He wrinkles his nose and John wants to laugh at the expression. “Mycroft texted this morning. He'll be insufferable now that he knows I'm alive.”

John is startled. “He didn't know?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “Only two people knew – Irene and Molly. The less people aware, the better. It took us this long to get the work done that needed to be done.”

“You know that you might go to prison for the murders,” John says.

Sherlock shrugs. “It's possible. Even likely, depending on the jury.”

“And you still think it's worth it,” John replies, anger sinking into his belly.

“Obviously,” Sherlock says. He frowns, and then his face softens. “You, and Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade are all alive. If I have to serve a prison sentence for that luxury I'll take it.”

John crosses the flat and stands a few inches away from Sherlock, looking at him. He's aged, but he's still Sherlock all over, eternally youthful.

“I'm still going to hit you at some point,” John warns him. Then he throws his arms around Sherlock and refuses to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And...that's all I have for now. Not sure when I'll be able to update this.

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, you can find me at my tumblr, disease-danger-darkness-silence.tumblr.com.


End file.
